The Body Keeper

by Anne Frasier

  While he was unconscious, Gail dug through his pockets and found a set of car keys. Outside, dressed for the brutal weather, she looked up and down the street, saw no signs of life because it was too cold, got in his car, circled to the alley, and pulled into her garage, closing the door behind her. Back in the house, she slapped his face and managed to bring him around enough to get him upright. Without giving him a chance to drop again, leaving his thin jacket on the chair, she put an arm around his waist and led him through the kitchen and out the back door, down a sidewalk through her fenced yard to the garage, where she urged him into the back seat of his car. He crawled in and curled up, knees to chest.

  “C-cold,” he mumbled, eyes closed, but still more alert than she’d like. As a precaution, she retrieved duct tape from the house and wrapped his ankles and wrists, finishing with a strip across his mouth. Then she closed the car door and locked it with the key fob. He could open it from inside, but he was probably too out of it for that.

  In the house, she checked the temperature. Twenty below and dropping. The garage would be slightly warmer, but not much. Not enough for anybody to live long.

  She dumped the alcohol down the toilet, rinsed the bottle, and stuck it in the recycling container, then sat at the table and waited. Several hours later, she returned to the garage. He was dead, and it didn’t even look like he’d moved. She felt comforted by that. No struggle. Just went to sleep and never woke up.

  “I’m sorry for being such a bad mother.”

  She cut the duct tape from his wrists and ankles. When she pulled the tape from his face, a little frozen skin came with it. Once night arrived again, she’d get rid of his body and his car in a way that would make it look like he’d died of stupidity.

  CHAPTER 37

  The road to Nanette Perkins’s house was a mile of gravel running through snow-covered fields with the occasional cornstalk stubble hinting of last season’s crop. Jenny Hill had spent a few summers on her aunt’s farm, enough for the terrain to have a sense of familiarity. The openness after the claustrophobia of snow-crippled Minneapolis was a nice break. In the city, there were no deep breaths to be had. Even though the day was gray and overcast, it felt freer out here. Jenny inhaled. Just being able to see into the distance did her good. She could feel the tension draining from her shoulders.

  Sympathy was sometimes lacking in her coworkers at Child Protection Services. They turned it off in order to get through the things they had to get through, and the awful things they had to see. But farm life was hard under the most ideal conditions, and Ms. Perkins wasn’t in the best shape. Maybe she hadn’t worked enough to get social security benefits, and maybe she didn’t know she could get assistance through the Minnesota Family Investment Program, especially designed for people with children. Jenny would help her with that.

  Yes, Nanette Perkins had left the boy outside in a storm, but she’d also left him with someone she felt would take care of him. Just misguided and desperate. Jenny’s hope was to get the Perkins home approved, get Ms. Perkins financial aid, and get the child back to her. Children belonged with their parents as long as the department could be assured of their safety. Some kids fell through the cracks, but Jenny had a good track record for sorting out the bad parents from the simply desperate ones. Which was why she’d been sent to the farm today.

  Someone, possibly a neighbor, had plowed the lane to the house, but snow had drifted in, and it was maybe eight inches deep in places.

  The two-story sprawling white farmhouse with peeling paint looked like it had been added onto several times, with rooms that jutted from the main structure, maybe expanded years ago when farm families were huge. The house itself felt cut off and was surrounded by more fields. Hard to say how far it was to the nearest neighbor, probably over a mile. Maybe more.

  There were the requisite outbuildings. A barn with a collapsing roof, a couple of silos, and a row of cement bunkers that might have been for silage. Another word Jenny had learned from her days with her aunt and uncle. Silage.

  No sign of livestock. Records showed that the husband had died five years ago. If they’d raised livestock, Nan might have sold them off, either because she needed the money or couldn’t care for them by herself. Or both. But once the livestock was gone, so was much of the income. Hence the term cash cow.

  The place seemed abandoned except for a faint light showing through the haze of a ruffled kitchen curtain. Jenny checked the outdoor temperature gauge on her dashboard. Ten above zero. The lack of sun made it feel colder.

  Shutting off the engine, she grabbed her laptop case and trudged to the door in her heavy boots. The sidewalk hadn’t been shoveled. Instead, there was a narrow beaten path through two feet of snow. She’d have to check and see if anyone was available to help with snow removal. Homebound with a broken leg . . . This wasn’t acceptable. The county needed to do more to help people like Ms. Perkins. If they’d been doing their job, the boy might not have ended up on Jude Fontaine’s front step.

  Jenny knocked, and a woman’s voice shouted for her to come in.

  Inside, Jenny’s nose was immediately assaulted by the odor of cigarettes and an unwashed body. The house itself could use a good cleaning. Her heart took a dive. Not good.

  The television was blaring, turned to a channel that sold items twenty-four hours a day. In her years as a social worker, Jenny had noticed that a high percentage of poor and lonely and elderly watched shopping channels. They even called in, hoping to one day talk to the sweet people they saw daily from their living room chair. Jenny was surprised to find that shopping channels even had stars with huge followings.

  The kitchen was to the left, living room to the right, hallway straight ahead with the curved edge of wooden stairs peeking out.

  “Sorry,” Ms. Perkins said from one corner of a floral couch, walker in front of her, crutches leaning against couch cushions, leg in a walking boot she had propped on a pillow atop a footstool. “It takes me time to get up.”

  “Stay where you are.” Jenny bent to untie her insulated boots, slipping her feet out, wondering if there was really any point, but she would never walk around in her own house with boots on, so she wasn’t going to do it in someone else’s, no matter how dirty the floor.

  “Can I get you anything?” Jenny asked. It was a good excuse to see the kitchen or a bedroom.

  “Nope. Thanks, hon. A neighbor checked on me not too long ago. Got some water right here, and an electric blanket. I just wanna get my boy back. It’s so empty here without him.” She lifted one arm, pinched a bit of sleeve, and wiped at her eyes. “I know it was wrong to leave him out there. Not sure what I was thinking. I don’t do drugs. Test me. The only thing you’ll find are the painkillers they gave me after my accident.” She glanced at the overflowing ashtray next to her. “Well, I do smoke. My husband and I both smoked. But I never smoked in the house until I broke my leg.”

  Jenny sat gingerly on the edge of the couch, pulled her laptop from her bag, and placed it on her knees. She opened the questionnaire used for evaluating a child’s living situation. She would fill everything in, then upload it to their site.

  Ms. Perkins grabbed the remote and turned off the television. The sudden silence was uncomfortable. “How old are you?” she asked the girl.

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Just a kid.”

  “Not really.”

  Jenny went through the questions, her unease growing as the interview progressed. “Why doesn’t the child have a name?” she asked.

  “He was supposed to name himself. I told Detective Fontaine that. But he just wanted to be called Boy. It was a stupid idea. I should have named him when he was born. And did you get a good look at him? Did he look underfed? Not cared for?”

  “He shows signs of physical abuse. And is slightly underweight.”

  “It wasn’t me. I would never have done that. And the guy who did? He’s gone. Long gone. If I could have afforded a doctor, I would have taken him in.”
r />   “Or is it possible you didn’t want to get in trouble or be accused of abuse?”

  “That too, I can’t lie.”

  She asked more questions. Pages of them. Things weren’t looking good, and Ms. Perkins could probably see her chances had dwindled quickly.

  “I’m not going to get him back, am I?” the woman asked when they were done.

  “It’s too early to say.” Not really. Jenny was the most lenient caseworker, but even she could see this was a bad environment for a child. “I’m only one of a team who decides. I’ll upload everything to our portal. Other people will read and evaluate my report.” Also not the full truth. They’d already gone over the case, and much of it hinged on the feedback and recommendation Jenny supplied. But it was always good to be able to hang the results on the facility as a whole rather than one specific person. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes people felt the need to retaliate, whether it be slashed tires or something more serious, like death threats.

  She put her laptop aside and pulled out her phone, opening the camera app. “I’m going to need to take some photos. I hope that’s okay.” Getting to her feet, she began snapping pictures of the living room, then moved to the kitchen. In the refrigerator, she found very little, and what was there looked spoiled. The refrigerator itself looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned in years.

  “Now for the boy’s room,” she said when she was done in the kitchen.

  “I can tell you aren’t going to let me have him back. You should just go now.”

  The interview had taken an unexpected turn, and Jenny knew that what she documented from now on out was information that could possibly end up in court. She ignored the woman’s protests and moved down a narrow hall. She took photos of two bedrooms, both packed with junk and piles of clothing and broken furniture. One of the rooms had a bed. The other might or might not have had a bed somewhere under all the trash.

  Jenny heard a drawer slam shut. Moments later, Nanette was standing behind her in the hallway. Jenny had been so preoccupied she hadn’t heard her coming. Ms. Perkins was holding herself up with the walker, hands braced on each side, arms stiff. A baggy gray sweatshirt, sweatpants, hair that hadn’t been washed for a while. Jenny felt a wave of sympathy for someone who couldn’t take care of herself, much less a child.

  “Where does the boy sleep?” Jenny asked. “I don’t see a room that looks like a child’s.”

  “He sleeps with me part of the time. I know he’s getting a little old for that, but he has nightmares . . .”

  “Does he have a bed of his own? We require that. Is it upstairs?”

  “There’s nothing upstairs. Just more of the same.”

  “Then is his room in the addition I saw?” That would be odd and unacceptable, a young child sleeping so far from adults. “I’ll have a look out there.”

  “You need to leave.” There was no way to miss the agitation in the woman’s voice. She didn’t want Jenny to dig any deeper.

  “Is this the way?” She spotted a door off the kitchen.

  “Stop!” Ms. Perkins said. “You don’t have my permission to go there.”

  “You gave your permission when you agreed to this meeting, when you signed paperwork at the hospital for an evaluation. You are the one who wants your child back.” Behind her, she heard scrambling and scuffling. Ms. Perkins, following with the walker.

  “Stop! Don’t go in there!”

  At first Jenny thought the room was locked. But after rattling the knob, she threw her shoulder against the door and practically fell inside.

  No windows; the only light came from the murky hallway behind her. Jenny turned on her flashlight app and frowned. Metal cots, no mattresses, lined up against a cinder-block wall. A dog kennel to one side. The room was long and narrow and cell-like, with a heavy exterior door to her left on the driveway side of the building. On the floor near the beds stood a large propane heater, the kind used to heat an open barn, not an enclosed space.

  Her first guess was that this had once been a place for migrant workers. Some farmers, ones who raised crops that needed to be picked by hand, like tomatoes or apples, hired undocumented immigrants in the fall. Not a huge surprise, and something many turned a blind eye to. But these were appalling conditions for those workers.

  She was counting the beds, wondering who to report this to, when she noticed something even more alarming. There were chains attached to the wall above each sleeping space.

  Were migrant workers lured here, then held captive? Was she looking at something from long ago?

  “I took care of them,” the woman said from behind her. “Every one of them. I was a mother to them all. I talked to them, and I read to them. They stopped crying when I was around. They looked to me for comfort.”

  “Are you talking about children?”

  “I told you to stay out of here,” she said. “I’m not a bad person. I wish people would understand that.”

  Jenny had come close to losing her life a few times. Once when the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis collapsed minutes after she’d driven across it. Another time she almost didn’t see a light-rail train when she was crossing the street on foot. But even though she’d lived in the Twin Cities many years, and even though she’d also been mugged a couple of times and her money stolen, she’d never felt in danger of losing her life to another human.

  Until now.

  Her world shrank to the room and the palpable evil that permeated the walls and radiated from the woman standing a few feet away. And all she could think of was how this was such an awful place to die, and how sad her parents were going to be, and would anybody ever even find her? But beneath those thoughts, she wondered if she had a chance; she wondered if she could rush Ms. Perkins, who was blocking her escape. If she could get past the woman, she could most definitely outrun her. But something was happening, a sort of acquiescence. She felt a softness or weakness of her knees and an acceptance. And yet she still dredged up a feeble attempt.

  “What a cute little room.” Her voice was breathy and flat and so transparent. “But some artwork and maybe a plant and a braid rug over there would really brighten it up.”

  Her phone was still in her hand. She could press the emergency button. How did one do that? She glanced at the screen, the flashlight illuminating her feet and the wool socks she’d spent a fortune on, thinking she’d get several seasons out of them.

  “Put your phone down,” Ms. Perkins said.

  It was over. She knew it was over. “I won’t say anything,” she said. “I see weirder things than this all the time. Cots? That tells me nothing. You had a Boy Scout camp or something. Migrant workers stayed here. It happens.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ms. Perkins said. “I really am. I’m better than this.”

  A handgun appeared out of nowhere. Maybe from the bag attached to the walker. Yes, that would have been the perfect place to hide such a thing.

  “Put down the phone.”

  Jenny clutched it tighter as she dropped to the nearest bed, unable to stand another second. “Don’t,” she whispered, not looking at the woman. “Please. I have two cats.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. I really am.”

  Jenny actually heard the gunshot. That surprised her. It was loud in the confined space. Her ears rang, kind of a wong, wong, wong that started long and gradually faded. Something hot and wet ran down her stomach, and her cell phone slipped from her fingers. She’d never had a serious boyfriend, but she hadn’t given up on that. Now she thought about the nice guy she’d hoped to meet and the family she’d hoped to have. It seemed unlikely now.

  CHAPTER 38

  Nan watched the blood slowly spread across the concrete.

  She picked up the girl’s sticky phone. The screen was locked, but the device appeared undamaged. Even though Nan was in a walking cast, she didn’t like to put weight on it. Hurt like hell. She hobbled to the body, grabbed a hand, and stuck the dead girl’s finger to the screen. She was in.

  Thank God for
fingerprint verification.

  In “Settings,” she turned off the screen-lock feature before stuffing the phone in her sweatshirt pocket. It would come in handy later.

  Maneuvering the walker, she clumped back to the main house. In the living room, she dropped to the couch, propped her broken leg on a cushion, and pulled the girl’s laptop near. The file she’d been working on was still open. Nan deleted most of the information and replaced the text with positive and harmless wording, leaving some of the young woman’s comments so the evaluation would feel believable. Things like the condition of the house, changing words like filthy (filthy!) to understandably messy due to the owner’s injury. At the bottom of the report was a box for the evaluator to give her own opinion. I do not recommend returning the child to his mother was changed to Recommend immediate return of child to his mother with biweekly monitoring.

  The caseworker turned out to be one of those people who had her laptop set to autofill passwords. If she weren’t dead, Nan would have suggested a class in online security. It was amazing with all the bad in the world that people still did such stupid things. Nan was no techie, but this stuff was easy. With a history search, Nan found the proper portal and uploaded the file for others in the department to access.

  Once that was taken care of, she wiped blood from the girl’s phone before opening the text messages app. The most recent message was to a coworker, sharing her plans to evaluate Nan, and her approximate time of return to the office. Nan scrolled through a couple of months of conversations, got a feel for the girl’s voice. She must have had OCD, because her messages were full, punctuated sentences, more like emails. Nan typed a reply.

  I’m done at the Perkins farm. Uploaded my report. Honestly, I feel we should give her another chance. With monitoring of course.☺ Nanette Perkins seems like a hardworking woman who loves her son but fell into financial problems and depression after her husband died. The abuser is no longer in her life. I’m confident of that. I also suggest we line up a therapist who can engage her in talk therapy and possibly medication to help with the depression.